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Want a new urban model? Go west

Even in this city of condos, The Beasley stands out. Not because of its height (33 storeys), the number of units (271) or its location (Yaletown). What makes it impossible to ignore is its name &ndash; The Beasley.

VANCOUVER–Even in this city of condos, The Beasley stands out. Not because of its height (33 storeys), the number of units (271) or its location (Yaletown). What makes it impossible to ignore is its name – The Beasley.

In this city, that can mean only one thing, Larry Beasley.

On the off chance you haven't heard of Beasley, he is Vancouver's former chief planner and creator of the famous "Vancouver model," which for all its flaws, now defines this city.

The point is that in a world obsessed with starchitects and celebrity designers, Vancouver is one of few cities to have grasped that the important issue isn't architecture, but planning. It's not so much buildings as the space between them that differentiates one city from another, that makes one city attractive, another unappealing.

In what other city would a condo be named for a planner? Certainly not in Toronto, where planning is conspicuous largely by its absence. It's easy for Torontonians to be unaware that planning can and should play a major role, that it can provide the logic, rationale and vision of a city and its future. Done properly, planning liberates architecture; done poorly, it traps design in a prison of contextual isolation and mediocrity.

Just look around.

Confronted with the Vancouver model, critics find much to carp about. And it's true the city remains a work in progress; but to wander the streets of Yaletown and Coal Harbour is to see, clearly and incontrovertibly, evidence of a city with rules, a city that knows where it's headed.

Little wonder, then, that "Vancouverism," as it's now called, is being copied around the globe. Beasley has even been hired by Abu Dhabi to create an urban plan for that fast-growing, oil-rich, green-wannabe emirate.

In Toronto, by contrast, it's every man for himself. This remains a place where developers and their hired guns routinely run roughshod over planning regulations. Aided and abetted by the Ontario Municipal Board, which has no equivalent in British Columbia, they are free to ignore the city and carry on regardless. The results can be seen at every turn; thus Toronto has become a place where things rarely add up. It is less than the sum of its parts.

Interesting, too, that Toronto has politicized the development process to the point where the tastes and attitudes of individual councillors matter more than any number of planning reports. In other words, Toronto's planning regime is a recipe for disaster.

In this respect, Toronto has much to learn from Vancouver. From the fact that it elects councillors-at-large, to the existence of the Design Review Board and the Development Permit Board, Vancouver manages for the most part to minimize connections between developers and politicians. The latter set the rules, the former play by them.

But perhaps this is the tip of the iceberg, indicative of the fundamental differences between the two cities. With its spectacular landscape of mountains and ocean, Vancouver as an institution is deeply aware of its responsibility to preserve at least some of that natural splendour. Not to say that the suburbs around the city aren't as dreary and depressing as any in Southern Ontario, but in the downtown core, planning is strict. The city sees itself as something special, and pays close attention to what happens within its borders.

There's no better example than the story of the Wall Centre. The hotel/condo tower was approved on the understanding that it would be clad in clear glass. When the developer used dark glass instead, the city issued a stop work order and insisted the material be changed. Some city councillors wanted to force the builder, Peter Wall, to remove the cladding and start from scratch. That didn't happen and the result is a two-toned tower that switches from dark to light about half way up.

That would simply never happen in Toronto, where we're ever so grateful that someone, anyone, is willing to invest in the city. It is this mixture of inferiority and greed that leads to a system unwilling to make demands of the development industry.

More than anything, this is why Toronto has grown famous for the mediocrity of its architecture. Recently, we have adopted elements of the Vancouver model and created two design review panels, one for the waterfront and one for downtown. The former is an acknowledged failure; the latter has had more success.

Of course, such measures need time to effect change. We'll have to wait and see how things play out.

"We've had a depoliticized system for so long it works," says Gordon Price, former Vancouver city councillor and now director of the City Program at Simon Fraser University. "Everyone has a stake in it – developers, politicians and residents. It dates back to the 1970s, and now we're 15 or 20 years ahead of where we thought we'd be. We're at the point where we can start to Europeanize the downtown. The car is no longer the dominant form of transportation."

And as for the OMB, Price makes it clear he thinks it's utterly wrong. "The last thing you want," he argues, "is a body like the OMB that allows decision-makers not to take their roles seriously."

It may seem ironic that a city renowned for its laid-back lifestyle turns out to be so much more serious about development than Toronto, known for its devotion to the bottom line. Yet there you have it. Perhaps that's why Vancouver so often places close to the top of the World's Most Liveable Cities lists, and Toronto doesn't.

There's a difference between being smart and being rich. Indeed, in the hands of some, wealth becomes just an excuse for stupidity.

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